Category Archives: Expecting

I was sound asleep when Kenley woke me up a couple of weeks ago to let me know that Kate Middleton had gone into labor. I quickly fell back asleep (I hear I’m not going to get much of it in about four months), but the next day I checked my Twitter feed obsessively, awaiting the news that she had delivered.

I’m not an avid royal watcher, but I am still a media hound who’s fascinated by the latest breaking story.

And this was personal.

There had been several reports that Kate — or the Duchess of Cambridge, if we must be formal — had chosen to use a method called Hypnobirthing for the arrival of her first-born child. And Kenley and I just so happened to be attending our third Hypnobirthing class the very day the future king was born.

I wanted to know how long Kate had been in labor. I was looking for evidence that Hypnobirthing actually worked.

We loved the fertility specialist, and I still look forward to my weekly acupuncture appointments, but I had put off calling the hypnotherapist — perhaps because I wanted to delay for as long as possible the thought of giving birth to the growing boy now making himself known daily in my belly.

The theory of Hypnobirthing is that women have been conditioned since, well, the story of Adam and Eve to believe that giving birth is painful — is even supposed to be painful. This can lead moms to feel scared, stressed and tense, which leads to long and painful births. The theory is that if you are able to release your fear and to deeply relax, trusting that your body knows what to do, you can experience an easier, faster and more comfortable birth — without medication.

Hypnobirthing uses neutral words like “waves” and “surges” in place of painful-sounding “contractions.” “Birthing” is substituted for “delivery” (Alisha says pizzas, not babies, are delivered).

You learn different slow-breathing techniques — none of which requires you to pant — as well as visualization exercises. You’re encouraged to walk, sit on a birthing ball, and get in the shower or bathtub during labor. Alisha even told the dads to pack swim trunks and a beer or two in a cooler.

“Sounds like a beach party,” Kenley told me.

OK, it’s not going to be that easy.

Alisha often reminds us that what we expect tends to become realized. So we’re taught exercises to help us release negative thoughts and fears about giving birth. She also asks us to visualize the calm, comfortable, joyful, healthy birth that we want.

We were convinced of the power of suggestion during an exercise in the first class, when Alisha had us close our eyes and stretch our arms out in front of us. She told us to “picture, visualize, imagine” that someone was stacking one book after another onto our left hands, and that someone was giving us helium balloons to hold with our right hands.

When we opened our eyes at the end of the exercise, our left hands were by our sides, weighed down by the “books,” and our right hands had risen up next to our ears, without any conscious effort.

The best part about the Hypnobirthing classes is that the dads learn how to hypnotize the moms! Now, some of you might be worried about what your husband could do with this power, but you’re not unconscious when you’re hypnotized, and no one can make you do something you don’t want to do. Instead, you remain aware of your surroundings but learn to deeply relax your body and your mind.

One of my favorite hypnosis scripts asks you to close your eyes and relax as “all the little worry lines around your eyes and across your forehead begin to fade and disappear.” During another, you visualize being on your favorite beach and are told that “you look good and feel good.” And in another, you’re told that the more you let go, the more you relax; and the more you relax, the more you’re in control.

So when the birth of the future king was announced, I was happy to learn that Kate had been in labor for a little more than 10 hours, short of the 16-hour average — and especially impressive for a first-born who weighed almost 9 pounds!

There have been few reports about how the birth actually went, but at this point it really isn’t that important to me anymore. I feel much more prepared and confident about the birth of my own first-born.

And I was concerned about the expectations that people (including ourselves) might place on the baby as soon as they found out whether it was a boy or a girl.

But who was I kidding? I’m a planner! Plus, I didn’t want a closet full of only yellow and green clothes, which for some reason seem to be the only acceptable neutral colors for babies.

None of that seemed important, though, after our first-trimester screening came back with some potentially alarming results. We had to do a follow-up DNA test — and wait several days for results — to make sure the baby was OK.

That test also would reveal the sex of the baby, about six weeks earlier than soon-to-be parents generally find out.

So — 11 very long days later, when I finally got the phone call with the test results — all I cared about was whether the baby was healthy. I was overjoyed when the doctor told me everything was OK, and I didn’t object when she asked whether I was sure I wanted to know the sex.

I immediately called Kenley (I was on the way to a girls beach trip in Charleston, S.C., while he was in the recording studio in Columbia) and told him the baby was OK. I asked him whether he wanted to know — son or daughter? — and I was a bit surprised when he asked me to hold off.

When he joined me in Charleston a couple of days later, Kenley still wasn’t sure he wanted to know the sex. I started to get worried. I knew I couldn’t keep that big of a secret for six months!

For the next several weeks, I had to be careful of my pronouns. I slipped a few times, but I also threw in purposeful decoys to throw him off the trail.

I finally convinced Kenley that he wanted — needed — to know, and I planned to reveal the gender to him on Father’s Day. I took pictures of the moment so we could relive the surprise. Scroll down and read the captions below:

First, I picked up a special order of cupcakes from Sprinkles.

These sweet baby-themed treats had a surprise inside.

Kenley took a bite of a cupcake to reveal the color of the filling: pink for a girl, blue for a boy.

Blue!

Our little cupcake is a boy!

Turns out, I didn’t have to worry about spoiling the surprise; Kenley says he thought it was a girl the whole time.

Kenley is the first of three boys and thought the odds were aligned for a daughter.

I wasn’t even eight weeks pregnant, and we weren’t ready to share our news just yet.

But I was pretty sure he and my mom would rather be here in November instead, when their first grandchild is due. So I tried to stall him.

Soon, though, I ran out of excuses, and we decided we had to let Dad in on our secret — as long as he swore not to tell Mom until we were ready.

He assured me that he was good at keeping secrets. After all, he was a lawyer. Plus, he’d already proved he could be trusted. When Kenley asked him three years ago for his blessing to marry me, Dad somehow managed to keep it a surprise for Mom until after the question had been popped.

A little more than two weeks after letting Dad know, I got a pleading email from him: “I’m about to bust, but I’m keeping quiet.”

So after our 10-week doctor’s appointment, Kenley and I finally shared the news with my mom, Kenley’s parents and all of our brothers. (We were most concerned about Kenley’s middle brother, Logan, who has done surprisingly well in keeping this secret for so long.)

It’s the first grandchild for both sets of our parents, so they, of course, were thrilled (and my dad was relieved). The first comment from my mom was similar to my dad’s remark weeks earlier:

“Well, we weren’t sure whether this was ever going to happen!”

(I actually think the news is what prompted Mom to finally join Facebook — so she wouldn’t miss any photos of her grandchild.)

We told Kenley’s parents via video-chat, and we should have recorded his mom’s reaction. It rivaled that of a viral video we’d seen, in which a daughter delivers the news to her parents and her mother completely loses it.

On our video-chat, there was shrieking, maybe a few tears, and I’m quite sure Mrs. Young still has a big grin on her face.

My brother, Patrick, sent me an urgent text after finding out the news: “Very important: Will your unborn child be a Clemson or Carolina fan?!”

My answer? “Neither!” For the sake of our marriage, the baby must remain neutral — or ignore college football — until it is 18. So please, no orange or garnet baby clothes!

Kenley and I had planned a trip back to South Carolina in May; I had a girls beach trip in Charleston, and Kenley and I also were invited to a friend’s wedding in the city. We were looking forward to sharing the news with our friends when we arrived — until we got some potentially alarming results from a first-trimester screening. We decided to take a non-invasive follow-up test before we left.

And then, all we could do was wait for the results. That meant that Kenley and I boarded the plane to S.C. on a Wednesday, not knowing whether the baby was OK.

It seemed like the longest 11 days of my life. I initially delayed going to the beach while waiting on the results, but ultimately I decided to drive there Friday morning, since I’d flown across the country to hang out with my girlfriends. I got the phone call from the doctor en route to the beach.

The only word I heard her say was “OK,” and then I burst into tears of joy on the sidewalks of downtown Charleston.

I called Kenley — who was at The Jam Room studio in Columbia, recording his soon-to-be-released record — and told him the good news. (Check out Kenley’s music.)

Later that afternoon on the beach, I got to share the news with my friends, some of whom I’ve known since preschool. They got suspicious as soon as they realized my Solo cup was filled with ice water, and not a cold beer. (My friend Kendall noted that no matter how hard I gripped the cup, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.)

And later that weekend, back home in Columbia, I revealed the news to some of my friends from college. We sent this photo to those who couldn’t join us.

Once we got back to Los Angeles, Kenley announced our news to our friends here during a gig at an Irish pub, after dedicating a cover of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” to me.

Photo by Maureen Roth

Perhaps the best advice I’ve received so far is from my friend Valerie (a former reporter for The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., and now a Wall Street Journal reporter and mother of two). She said the funny thing about being a parent is that all the cliches are true:

It’s hard work, it changes your life, etc., etc. … So let me echo what you’ve already heard: Go out to eat. Go out to the movies. Go anywhere you want to go (as you’ve spent the past several years doing, wisely)!

Now that’s advice I can follow. So in the next few months, we plan to catch a few more summer blockbusters in the theater; sample more L.A. dining establishments; see The Postal Service, The Avett Brothers and Atoms for Peace in concert; and make at least one more trip back to S.C. to relax on the beach and help my dad celebrate his retirement.

Because we have a new life-changing adventure that begins in late November!

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OUR LIVES CHANGED FOREVER March 15. It was a Friday, and Kenley and I had invited some friends to an Irish bar for a pre-St. Patrick’s Day pint or two.

Little did I know, but I’d already had my last adult beverage for at least nine months.

I’d stopped by the drugstore that evening on the way home from work, and now I was standing in my bathroom staring at a digital message on a plastic stick (and making sure I was reading it correctly.)

I wasn’t nervous. There had been other plastic sticks in the past several months, but I had never seen this message before: “PREGNANT.”

It occurred to me at that moment how some wives plan elaborate celebrations to surprise their husbands with this news — but I didn’t have a lot of time. A few minutes after finding out the news myself, I heard our front door swing open and the familiar sound of our dog Malia’s paws pattering through the apartment.

She and Kenley were back from their walk, and we needed to leave to meet our friends at the bar in 10 minutes.

I guess some things just can’t be planned. I greeted Kenley and unceremoniously handed him the plastic stick I’d been waving around in the air. I told him I wouldn’t be able to participate in a Guinness toast, but that he definitely should raise a celebratory pint. (I might have promised that we could give the baby an Irish name, and I think Kenley just might hold me to it.)

Kenley admits he was pretty bewildered at first; normally the only excitement he and Malia encounter on their walks is when she spots a squirrel.

But after he was able to focus on the word on the stick, he broke into a grin, and gave me a big hug and kiss. And it’s been hard to wipe that proud grin off his face (except when he thinks about how expensive raising a child is going to be.)

Malia had no idea what was going on, but she’ll have to get used to sharing the spotlight soon.

That night at the bar, I ordered a ginger ale. But when people asked, I told them I was drinking a Jameson’s and ginger. I’m not sure anyone was fooled.

It all started back in December when I went to my regular OB-GYN appointment. As she had done the year before, my doctor looked at my chart, noticed my birth date, and asked whether I wanted to have a family. I gulped and said I thought so. Her response: “Let’s make it happen.”

I thought that was kinda funny at the time — I was pretty sure I knew how to make it happen — but it turns out that her directness was just the motivation I needed.

I left her office with the cards and brochures for a fertility doctor, an acupuncturist and a hypnotherapist.

Couldn’t hurt, right?

About a month later, Kenley and I were sitting across from Dr. Kari Sproul at Pacific Fertility Center as she explained the birds and the bees to us in very scientific terms — pictures and diagrams included. She detailed the options available to us if we needed assistance.

Dr. Sproul was very matter-of-fact, and some of the statistics regarding 39-year-olds trying to get pregnant for the first time were pretty disheartening. But she also was very personable and seemed genuinely supportive. We walked away knowing two things: Timing would be everything, but we also potentially were facing a long, stressful and expensive process.

In the following weeks, we did some tests and found no medical reason that we shouldn’t be able to get pregnant, other than my age — which, despite the statistics, I refused to believe was a huge problem. So we put off treatments and committed to “trying” on our own.

As those of you who have found yourselves in this situation know, “scheduling” this kind of thing can prove difficult and exhausting. But Kenley, who suffers from OCD, made sure we stuck to the plan.

I also scheduled my first acupuncture appointment, with Dr. Mindy Boxer. Going to Dr. Boxer’s office is much like going to a spa: There’s a massage table and soothing music. But you’re also getting tiny needles stuck in strategic locations all over your body. It’s surprisingly relaxing.

Acupuncture has been shown to reduce stress, which is a leading cause of problems with fertility. It also has been reported to boost fertility by restoring balance and encouraging flow of blood and energy through the body.

And all that before we attend our first hypno-birthing class later this month.

Dr. Boxer also urged me to develop better eating habits. I kept a food journal for several weeks, and she circled the foods she didn’t like with a red pen. There was a lot of red. I did make some improvements — cutting back on meat and eating more beans and fruit.

But limiting dairy, carbs and sugar while increasing my intake of green veggies has been more challenging.

Whatever we did, it worked! We were able to get pregnant surprisingly quickly on our own. After we took “the test” at home, Dr. Sproul saw us quickly to confirm the news with blood work — and then several weeks later with photographic evidence. One good thing about getting pregnant when you’re “old” is that doctors are willing to see you quickly, and you get a lot of ultrasounds.